Thursday 22 November 2007

Ghost Stories

Ghost stories

One day, not so long ago, a man was coming up the road from the direction of the lower part of the village and just before he got to the main road that leads to the kafenion he saw two things like legless hippopotamuses floating in the air and trying to say something to him. He was scared of this and ran away.

Also in that area, below the Alpha Hotel towards Saita, people have reported seeing things that look like calves and these have been sighted at least 50 times. Strange things have happened in that valley.

One local man had a dream that he should go and dig under a pine tree near the Church of Agio Georgos and he would find a pot of gold. But he told his wife of the dream, something according to local belief that he should not have done. He dug in the spot and dug up a pot full of charcoal. He kept the pot but threw the charcoal away not realising that gold, without oxygen, becomes black if left long enough.

There are about 30 burial places around the village, some of them very old and some very mystical. One house is said to be cursed; those who live in it will have no descendants. At least 4 families have lived there and none of their babies survived.

The house behind it was said to have a big rock beneath it that housed a demon and this demon would come out and strangle the babies. One old lady, the great grandmother of the owner of the Alpha Kafenion, put an end to this by “buying” one of the babies. As soon as a child was born she went into the house and gave the parents 20 drachma saying “This child doesn’t belong to you anymore, you’re raising it for me.”

The child survived and the killings stopped. The houses there are still cursed though. Recently a person living in the house was arrested and was deported.

Crows now sit in the trees around the houses, day and night, and the area is very spooky, little will grow there only pine trees.

Another house in the village is haunted. This house used to be a kafenion and a man was murdered there one day, shot in the back by someone who was jealous of him. The dying man turned around to shoot his assailant but his gun was empty; he had used up all his bullets at a festival.

His ghost is still said to haunt the house but it’s believed to be a friendly ghost and not to mean harm.

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